GLASS CEILING

While the phrase glass ceiling is metaphorical, many women who find themselves bumping their heads on it find it very real indeed. It is most often used to describe the sexist attitude many women run into at the workplace. In a discussion of ascending the corporate ladder, the word “ceiling” implies that there is a limit to how far someone can climb it. Along with this implied barrier is the idea that it is glass, meaning that, while it is very real, it is transparent and not obvious to the observer. The term glass ceiling is most often applied in business situations in which women feel, either accurately or not, that men are deeply entrenched in the upper echelons of power, and women, try as they might, find it nearly impossible to break through.

Gay Bryant wrote an article in Adweek containing the first documented use of the term in 1984. The term glass ceiling became a permanent part of the American lexicon with a subsequent article in the Wall Street Journal published on 24 March 1986 by Carol Hymowitz and Timothy Schellhardt. While the term may be casually used, the Department of Labor took it very seriously in 1991 when they issued a definition of it, stating that a glass ceiling is made up of "artificial barriers based on attitudinal or organizational bias that prevent qualified individuals from advancing upward in their organization into management-level positions." The Department went on to establish a Glass Ceiling Commission in an effort to “level the playing field".

Other extensions of the glass ceiling include the glass elevator or escalator, which implies that there is an invisible vehicle that transports men up the through the ranks of corporate power. Glass cliff refers to a position that a woman may take that will put her in the precarious position of utter professional disaster if she fails. A take off on the glass ceiling is the celluloid ceiling, which refers to the glass ceiling that exists in Hollywood.

While many women insist that the glass ceiling is a real barrier to accessing male-dominated positions in business, many challengers say that it exists mostly because women choose to focus more of their time on family and, in the end, cannot dedicate as much time to their career. Others claim that women think they want to focus on their career, but in reality choose family over career. They cite a 2005 report that 43% of highly qualified, educated women with children left their jobs voluntarily at some stage of their careers. Although 93% wanted to return to their careers, only 74% did so and only 40% went back to a full time position. Of those women who wanted to return to work, only five percent desired to return to the position they had left.

Industries such as the investment industry have suffered the brunt of criticism about past blatant sexism, with legal judgments punishing Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley for their discriminatory practices. More recently, the investing industry has made huge efforts to recruit and train women for top positions. Changes are slow however, since currently, though women represent 33% of the best in the banks analyst classes, only 25% of newly hired associates are women. Only 14% of the top executives in the banking industry are women, and in 2005, one report showed that women make 80 cents for every one US dollar (USD) that men make. Many say that improvement, no matter how small, shows that there are cracks developing in the glass ceiling

A New Obstacle For Professional Women : The Glass Escalator

A new analysis by the New York Times today shows that more men are entering female-dominated professions like teaching and nursing, in an effort to achieve job stability, financial security and more time for family life. This employment shift has accounted for nearly a third of men’s total job growth from 2000 to 2010. However, while it’s good for men and potentially good for families, it’s a bit more complicated for the women in these fields.

The historical difficulties for women’s success in the workforce are well documented. First there was a closed door. Once it was opened and women started flooding the labor market and taking on the male-dominated corporate world, they then hit a glass ceiling—the unseen barrier that keeps them from rising to senior-level management.

Now, they must contend with yet another advancement obstacle, the “glass escalator.” While women climb the ladder in female-dominated professions, their male peers glide past them on an invisible escalator, shooting straight to the top.

“Men that enter female-dominated professions tend to be promoted at faster rates than women in those professions,” explains Caren Goldberg, Ph.D., an assistant professor of management at American University’s Kogod School of Business who has researched the phenomenon. “When you look at senior management, you tend to see men disproportionately represented. So while there may be less than 5% of all nurses who are male, you see a much larger percentage than 5% in senior-level positions like hospital administrators.”

Research shows that men in female-dominated jobs tend to fare better even than men in male-dominated jobs, and they typically earn higher salaries, receive more promotions, and achieve higher levels within organizations than their female counterparts.

Goldberg attributes the glass escalator, in part, to women’s increased likelihood of experiencing “career interruptions,” like taking time off to care for children or aging parents. At the same time, stereotypes about men and the characteristics of strong leadership work to men’s advantage.

“Research indicates that stereotypes about what a prototypical man is match with stereotypes about what a prototypical manager is,” says Goldberg, noting that men tend to be perceived as more assertive. “Because of the stereotype matching, men more readily fulfill our notions of what a manager should look like. And when you’re in a female-dominated profession, there are fewer people that have the ability to match it.”

So why aren’t more men racing to become nurses? Goldberg says despite the advancement potential in female-dominated professions, men still face negative cultural feedback for taking such jobs. Like Ben Stiller’s character as a male nurse in Meet The Parents, friends and family may question their masculinity and even openly mock their career choice.

Meanwhile, the glass ceiling remains for women in male-dominated fields. The only thing that’s changed is we see it now. “It’s still there; it’s tinted maybe but it hasn’t shattered yet,” Goldberg says. She notes

that some women are able to excel and climb to the top in male-dominated fields because they stand out, are respected for blazing a trail and are viewed as bucking the traditional feminine stereotypes. However, on average, she says they are perceived as not fitting in well.

In the short term, Goldberg thinks that more men moving into fields with 70% or more women “does not bode well for women.” Yet in the long term, it may be beneficial to women’s salaries. In female-dominated fields wages are generally suppressed, but when professions become more male, wages tend to go up. “Having a greater proportion of men does raise salaries,” she says, “but that’s a slower train.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/05/21/a-new-obstacle-for-professional-women-the-glass-escalator/

Mommy track

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mommy track is a term used to describe the diminishing opportunities of women in the workforce upon becoming mothers.[1] It is also frequently used in conjunction with the phrase “opting out,” which describes the phenomenon of women choosing to leave the workforce. The mommy track has primarily been observed within the United States, but has also been observed in other developed countries.

Origins of mommy track

Felice Schwartz’s 1989 article in the Harvard Business Journal is called the first discussion of the mommy track phenomenon.[2] Schwartz claims in the article that while “the cost of employing women in management is greater than the cost of employing men,”[3] this greater cost is due primarily to gendered expectations of the workplace and women’s duties in raising children. [4] Schwartz wrote:

The misleading metaphor of the glass ceiling suggests an invisible barrier constructed by corporate leaders to impede the upward mobility of women beyond the middle levels. A more appropriate metaphor, I believe, is the kind of cross-sectional diagram used in geology. The barriers to women’s leadership occur when potentially counterproductive layers of influence on women—maternity, tradition, socialization—meet management strata pervaded by the largely unconscious preconceptions, stereotypes, and expectations of men. Such interfaces do not exist for men and tend to be impermeable for women.[5]

Schwartz's assertions generated widespread publicity and a new conversation about women in the workplace. The New York Times was the publication to actually coin the term “Mommy track.” The term first appeared in a March 8, 1989 article, “Mommy Career Track Sets Off Furor" which discussed Schwartz’s article and the response to it in the public sphere. ”Mommy Career” described the "mommy track" as a phenomenon “in which women with family responsibilities are shunted into dead-end, lower-paying jobs.”[1]

Wage gap for mothers

Across different pay levels and socioeconomic groups, women’s earnings tend to plateau after giving birth.[6] Even when controlling for variables, on average mothers in all groups earn lower wages than non-mothers.[7] Beyond this general drop in earnings, though, there are significant differences in mothers’ wage gaps between high-earning women and low-earning women.

High-earning women

High-earning women appear to bear much higher costs of childbirth than low-earning women. Choosing to have children will force a woman to give up 21 to 33 percent of her lifetime earnings, a loss that could cost up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.[8] Ten years after having children, a highly skilled woman with children remains at a pay level 24% lower than non-mothers even when time out of the workforce is taken into account.[9] This group of women also seems to face greater discrimination within the

workplace; only 16% of women today are partners in law firms, a discrepancy absent from lower-skilled professions.[10] Higher-skilled women tend to have flatter wage-earning trajectories than their low-skilled counterparts after giving birth, primarily seen in a lack of wage growth.[11]

Low-earning women

Low-earning women who have children are sacrificing about 10 to 14 percent of their total lifetime earnings.[12] Even ten years after having children, a mother in this income bracket earns wages that are about 12% lower than non-mother, low-skilled women.[13] This group of mothers tends to experience a one-time fall in pay immediately after childbirth of about 6%, but after that initial fall the wage gap between women with children and does not continue to grow over time.[14]

Part-time work and flexibility

A theory frequently cited for why mothers earning lower wages than other women that is the fact that mothers tend to spend fewer hours in the workplace than non-mothers.[15] Part-time work and flextime or more flexible arrangements are seen as hallmarks of the mommy track, since they point to women not being in the workplace full-time. However, this is changing as more people—men and women alike—choose more flexible work arrangements that allow for more free time.[2]

Cultural pressures and influences

In the years since the women’s liberation movement and second-wave feminism, gender roles have become more complicated and less dogmatic.[16] Despite this, the modern ideal of “intensive parenting,” first described by Sharon Hays, ensures that mothers continue to take primary responsibility for raising children due to the engrained social norm that women are better nurturers.[17] This is one of the reasons that while both men and women report having increased trouble with their work-life balance after having a baby, women are the only ones whose hours working decrease as a response to this conflict.[18] Moreover, women who cannot afford to pay someone else to take care of domestic work are faced with the double burden of working outside of the home while continuing to complete the majority of domestic work in the home.[19]

Another cultural influence on mothers' decreased presence in the workforce is gender discrimination within the U.S. tax code. Since domestic labor in one’s own home is unpaid and untaxed, and women continue to do a majority of domestic labor as a result of societal norms, in many households it may seem less expensive for a women to take care of this labor than to go to work and pay someone else to cook, clean, and care for children.[20] The tax code also sees men as the primary earners and women as secondary earners, so men benefit from joint filing while women’s earnings are frequently subject to higher taxation.[21]

Criticism

There has been widespread opposition to the concept of the mommy track from many different sectors of society.

One opposing point of view focuses on the fact that worldwide, women choose to work fewer hours than do men. This viewpoint generally asserts that the mommy track is not part of any sort of societal discrimination against women, but comes as an effect of mothers choosing to spend more time away from work.[15]

Many feminists saw the idea of the mommy track as divisive to women and therefore one that could have a detrimental effect to the feminist cause. Since Schwartz’s initial article proposed sorting women into two categories based on their devotion to careers,[22] some saw this as a division between women that both forced them into narrow categories and ignored any existing differences between men.[1]

Mommy track outside the U.S.

While the mommy track is a concept that has been discussed primarily in the United States, mothers have vastly different work situations than non-mothers in most other countries as well. Other industrialized countries have begun to examine this phenomenon in recent years.

Japan

Japan’s social norms, like those of the U.S., help to cause many women to move into part-time work upon having children. However, unlike the U.S., Japanese mothers rarely return to full-time work after having children.[23] Even more so than other developed countries, Japan has an especially high proportion of women who work part-time, and a majority of those women are mothers.[24] Common business practices in Japan further penalize mothers who may have taken leave from the workplace at some point, due to companies choosing to only recruit directly from universities and setting upper limits on age for full-time positions.[25]

Nordic countries

As in the United States, the effects of marriage and children have far greater effects on women than on men, partly due to the expectation that women will continue unpaid domestic labor.[26] However, the Nordic countries have worked to make the dual-earner household the norm, with nationalized childcare, parental leave, and flexible working hours making it possible for women to continue to work.[27] In Sweden, for example, parents are given 12 months of parental leave time that can be divided between the two as each couple sees best.[28] Despite this, gender norms continue to have an effect: mandated maternity leave combined with Sweden allowing women to reduce work hours after giving birth means that nearly half of mothers in dual-income families work less than full-time.[28]

Glass ceiling

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In economics, the term glass ceiling refers to "the unseen, yet unbreachable barrier that keeps minorities and women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements."[1] Initially, the metaphor applied to barriers in the careers of women but was quickly extended to refer to obstacles hindering the advancement of minority men, as well as women.[2]

Definition

David Cotter et al. defined four distinctive characteristics that must be met to conclude that a glass ceiling exists. A glass ceiling inequality represents:

"A gender or racial difference that is not explained by other job-relevant characteristics of the employee."

"A gender or racial difference that is greater at higher levels of an outcome than at lower levels of an outcome.

"A gender or racial inequality in the chances of advancement into higher levels, not merely the proportions of each gender or race currently at those higher levels."

"A gender or racial inequality that increases over the course of a career."

Cotter and his colleagues found that glass ceilings are a distinctively gender phenomenon. Both white and African-American women face a glass ceiling in the course of their careers. In contrast, the researchers did not find evidence of a glass ceiling for African-American men.[3]

The glass ceiling metaphor has often been used to describe invisible barriers ("glass") through which women can see elite positions but cannot reach them ("ceiling").[4] These barriers prevent large numbers of women and ethnic minorities from obtaining and securing the most powerful, prestigious, and highest-grossing jobs in the workforce.[5] Moreover, this barrier can make many women feel as they are not worthy enough to have these high-ranking positions, but also they feel as if their bosses do not take them seriously or actually see them as potential candidates.[6][7]

The glass ceiling continues to exist although there are no explicit obstacles keeping women and minorities from acquiring advanced job positions – there are no advertisements that specifically say “no minorities hired at this establishment”, nor are there any formal orders that say “minorities are not qualified” (equal employment opportunity laws forbid this kind of discrimination) – but they do lie beneath the surface.[8] When a company exercises this type of discrimination they typically look for the most plausible explanation they can find to justify their decision. Most often this is done by citing qualities that are highly subjective or by retrospectively emphasizing/de-emphasizing specific criteria

that gives the chosen candidate the edge. Mainly this invisible barrier seems to exist in more of the developing countries, in whose businesses this effect is highly "visible".

There are many different impediments placed upon women that makes it difficult for them to attain a higher work status. With these very negative effects on women and their self-esteem, the glass ceiling has created an even larger problem than just in the work place. Most see the glass ceiling as only being in the work place, which is where it originally was intended for, it has spread to encompass the household and others as well. The barrier within the household has been seen as the difficulty a woman has of getting out of the household and accumulating a job. Not all women feel as though they are being suppressed in the household and many women choose to be in the household in which case the glass ceiling does not apply to them. The term only applies to those women that wish to be out in the work field but are unable to be. Because the glass ceiling also limits the opportunities of women in developing countries, the term has broadened and also become an issue around the world.

Glass Ceiling in the U.S.

Sexual discrimination in employment was outlawed in the United States through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the hopes of allowing women to rise in the working world once proper experience has been achieved. Though sometimes unspoken of, gender discrimination still occurs in the workforce. It has been shown that even if a woman has received the proper education and credentials, they are often not considered for the same job as a male with either equal or less credentials . This has created a greater gap in the income wage gap. Studies have shown that women without high school diplomas, on average, have an effective income less than that of men with comparable education levels and years of work experience.[9]

The term "glass ceiling" has been thought to have first been used to refer to invisible barriers that impede the career advancement of women in the American workforce in an article by Carol Hymowitz and Timothy Schellhardt in the March 24, 1986 edition of the Wall Street Journal.[10] However, the term was used prior to that; for instance, it was utilized in a March 1984 Adweek article by Gay Bryant. The term glass ceiling was used prior to the 1984 article by two women at Hewlett-Packard in 1979, Katherine Lawrence and Marianne Schreiber, to describe how while on the surface there seemed to be a clear path of promotion, in actuality women seemed to hit a point which they seemed unable to progress beyond. Upon becoming CEO and chairwoman of the board of Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina proclaimed that there was no glass ceiling. After her term at HP, she called her earlier statement a "[d]umb thing to say."[11]

The term was used by the U.S. Department of Labor in 1991 in response to a study of nine Fortune 500 companies. The Federal Glass Ceiling Commission study confirmed that women and minorities encountered considerable glass ceiling barriers in their careers; these barriers were experienced earlier in their professions than previously thought.[2]

In 1972, the first organization that examined the position of women in economics, the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP), was created. This committee monitored the progress of women in professional positions and engaged in activities that would help to further this

process.[12] Organizations such as this one have helped focus more academic attention to the glass ceiling, helping raise awareness of this issue.

Throughout history women have become aware of the strains being put on them and have begun to fight it. An example of this would be Hillary Clinton's run for presidency, which is often seen as the highest glass ceiling in America.[13] While many women have already broken these barriers and have successfully become CEO of companies, putting a woman in the White House remains the ultimate challenge.

A 2011 government report, “Women in the Federal Government: Ambitions and Achievements," followed up a previous 1992 report that examined this subject. The 2011 report's findings include: 1) Women have made considerable gains since 1992, when they represented just 35% of the professional, middle-tier federal workforce. Females “now hold approximately 44 percent of the positions in both professional and administrative occupations, which constitute the pipeline for positions at the highest grade and pay levels, including the Senior Executive Service"; 2) Despite these gains, women still only account for roughly 30% of the Senior Executive Service. Part of this might be due to lower willingness to relocate among female employees and the fact that “approximately 72 percent of positions in the career Senior Executive Service are located in the greater Washington, DC metropolitan area"; 3) Women remain less likely to hold higher-paid positions: “While women are a majority of employees in professional and administrative occupations that have a median salary between $70,000 and $79,999, they remain a distinct minority in occupations with a median salary of $90,000 or above.”[14]

Levels and types of glass ceiling barriers

Societal barriers

The Federal Glass Ceiling Commission of the United States Department of Labor identified two major societal barriers that cause and reinforce a glass ceiling. The supply barrier is related to opportunity and achievement. The difference barrier manifests itself as conscious and unconscious stereotypes, prejudice, and bias related to gender and ethnicity.[15]

Internal business barriers

The following business-based barriers were identified:

Outreach and recruitment practices that fail to seek out or recruit women and minorities

Prevailing culture of many businesses is a white male culture and such corporate climates alienate and isolate minorities and women

Initial placement and clustering in staff jobs or in highly technical and professional jobs that are not on the career track to the top

Lack of mentoring and management training

Lack of opportunities for career development, tailored training, and rotational job assignments that are on the revenue-producing side of the business

Little or no access to critical developmental assignments such as memberships on highly visible task forces and committees

Special or different standards for performance evaluation

Biased rating and testing systems

Little or no access to informal networks of communication

Counterproductive behavior and harassment by colleagues

The Federal Glass Ceiling Commission and independent research suggest that the underlying cause of the glass ceiling is the perception of many white males that as a group they are losing control and opportunity. Many middle- and upper-level white male managers regard the inclusion of minorities and women in management as a direct threat to their own chances for advancement. As a result of this "upper- and middle-level white male resistance", business-based barriers are not always being as forcefully addressed as they should.[16]

Governmental barriers

The Federal Glass Ceiling Commission pinpointed three governmental barriers to the elimination of the glass ceiling. They are:

Lack of vigorous and consistent monitoring and law enforcement

Weaknesses in the collection of employment-related data which makes it difficult to ascertain the status of groups at the managerial level and to disaggregate the data

Inadequate reporting and dissemination of information relevant to glass ceiling issues[17]

Other barriers

Different pay for comparable work.[2]

Sexual, ethnic, racial, religious discrimination or harassment in the workplace

Lack of family-friendly workplace policies (or, on the flipside, policies that discriminate against gay people, non-parents, or single parents)

Exclusion from informal networks; Stereotyping and preconceptions of women's roles and abilities; Failure of senior leadership to assume accountability for women's advancement; Lack of role models; Lack of mentoring [18]

Requiring long hours for advancement, sometimes called the hour-glass ceiling.[19]

Studies

The gender pay gap is the difference between male and female earnings. In 2008 the OECD found that the median earnings of female full-time workers were 17% lower than the earnings of their male counterparts and that "30% of the variation in gender wage gaps across OECD countries can be explained by discriminatory practices in the labour market."[20][21] The European Commission found that women's hourly earnings were 17.5 % lower on average in the 27 EU Member States in 2008.[22] The female-to-male earnings ratio was 0.77 in the United States in 2009.[23]

In 2006 economists Wiji Arulampalam, Alison L. Booth, and Mark L. Bryan analyzed gender pay gaps across the wage distribution in eleven European countries. They controlled for the effects of individual characteristics at different points of the distribution and calculated the part of the gap attributable to differing returns between men and women (i.e., pay discrimination). The economists found that the gender pay gaps typically widened toward the top of the wage distribution (the "glass ceiling" effect), and in exceptional cases it also widened at the bottom (the "sticky floor" effect).[24]

A study by John McDowell, Larry Singell and James Ziliak investigated faculty promotion on the economics profession and found that, controlling for quality of Ph.D. training, publishing productivity, major field of specialization, current placement in a distinguished department, age and post-Ph.D. experience, female economists were still significantly less likely to be promoted from assistant to associate and from associate to full professor. The results suggest the presence of a glass ceiling.[25]

In 2009, David R. Hekman et al. found that white men receive significantly higher customer satisfaction scores than equally well-performing women and minority employees. Customers who viewed videos featuring a black male, a white female, or a white male actor playing the role of an employee helping a customer were 19% more satisfied with the white male employee's performance and also were more satisfied with the store's cleanliness and appearance. This despite that all three actors performed identically, read the same script, and were in exactly the same location with identical camera angles and lighting. In a second study, they found that white male doctors were rated as more approachable and competent than equally-well performing women or minority doctors. They interpret their findings to suggest that customer ratings tend to be inconsistent with objective indicators of performance and should not be uncritically used to determine pay and promotion opportunities.[26][27][28][29][30]

A customer preference for white men may also help explain why white men hold the highest paying, most prestigious, and most powerful jobs in the occupational structure.[31] This is referred to as occupational segregation. Men tend to be highly concentrated in the top professions, such as supervisors, managers, executives, and production operators. On the other hand, women tend to be over-represented in the lowest-ranking and lowest paid professions in the workforce, such as secretaries, sales associates, teachers, nurses, and child care providers. As a result, occupations become “sex typed” as either being specifically male or female jobs.[32] The stereotypically male-characterized occupations, in which at least 60–75% of the workers are males, are more highly paid than occupations in which 60–75% of the jobholders are women.[33] This segregation of women into less-prestigious and lower-ranked jobs also decreases a woman’s chance of being promoted, as well as the chance of having

any type of power over others. Moreover, occupational segregation reduces women’s access to insurance, benefits, and pensions.[34]

Women are concentrated into the lower-ranked and lower-paid occupations within a given profession. If women are in management positions, they are more likely to be in personnel than in marketing professions; the averages salaries of each are $48,048 and $56,940 per year, respectively. Another example occurs within the medical field. Female doctors are much more likely to be heavily constricted in the family practice, obstetrics/gynecology or pediatric specialties, which average about $130,000 and $126,000 per year, respectively. However, men are more likely to become surgeons and highly specialized medical practitioners, who tend to average $240,000 or more per year.[35]

Women hold only 16% of the top executive positions in America’s largest corporations and enterprises.[31] Additionally, the median weekly income of full-time working women is only 70.5% of full-time working men. This statistic tends to hold true across all fields of work.[36] This gender imbalance in occupations occurs to some degree because women are more likely than men to be newcomers in many fields; therefore, they lack the primacy and the increased pay that comes with seniority.[35] When it comes to promotions, executives look at all the work that a woman has done but only looks at the potential that a man has. A woman has to prove herself and her talent in order to be considered for the same job that a man would only have to show potential for.[37]

Gender Inequality is often embedded within the social hierarchy and this affects how women and men are perceived in leadership roles. Different traits are ascribed to females when compared to males that often color the selection process with unfounded bias. If a female does have other traits aside from the gendered traits that she is believed to possess, then she is viewed negatively.[38] For example, in a study conducted by Thomas-Hunt and Phillips (2004) they found that when women possessed expertise they were actually viewed as less influential by others. However, expertise was positive for males. Also, female led groups were less productive than male led groups even though the women held expertise in the area just like males. Therefore, possessing expertise is not viewed as positively as it is for males. This also suggests that lack of skills is not the only reason why women are not deemed worthy of leadership roles.[39] As cited by Lyness and Thompson in 1997, one consequence of sex stereotypes is that women's achievements tend to be devalued or attributed to luck or effort rather than ability or skill, and therefore this stereotype has the potential to reduce the organizational awards that they receive.

Lyness and Heilman (2006) found that in a study conducted with 448 upper-level employees that women were less likely to be promoted than males, and if they were promoted they had stronger performance ratings than males. However, performance ratings were more strongly connected to promotions for women than men.[40] This suggests that women had to be highly impressive to be considered eligible for leadership roles, whereas this was not the case for men. In a number of longitudinal studies (Cox & Harquail, 1991; Olson, Frieze, & Good, 1987; Strober, 1982; Wallace, 1989; Wood, Corcoran, & Courant, 1993), that track comparably qualified men and women, such as graduates of the same MBA program or law school, it has been shown that over time there is degradation of the women's compensation that cannot fully be explained by differences in qualifications, work history, experience, or career interruptions.

Women are more likely to choose jobs based on factors other than pay, for instance: health care and scheduling that can be managed with the duties of primary care of children for which women are still overwhelmingly responsible, and thus they may be less likely to take jobs that require travel or relocation or jobs that are hazardous. On average, women take more time off and work fewer hours, often due to the unequal distribution of childcare labor, domestic labor, medical needs specific to women, and other family issues that tend to fall to a woman's responsibility per the gender roles assigned by society.[41] The ending result of women’s extensive obligation to attend to responsibilities of the home and children is that their wages plummet. Family demands have a downward pull on women’s earnings as they proceed throughout their life course. The earnings gap tends to widen considerably when men and women are in their early to mid-thirties; the gap reaches the widest point when men and women are in their fifties.[42]

Another perspective on the gender wage gap comes from a 2008 research study by Judge and Livingston.[43] They investigated the relationship(s) between gender, gender role orientation, and labor marker earnings. The study did not specifically look at the gender wage gap, but focused more on the impact that the interaction between gender role orientation (people’s beliefs about what occupations are considered suitable and appropriate for males and females) and gender has on earnings. The researchers suggested that the gender wage gap cannot fully be explained through economic factors, offering that underlying psychological components and attitudes account for some of the difference. They found that while traditional gender roles were positively connected to earnings, that gender significantly predicted the amount and direction of this relationship. For instance, traditional gender role orientation was positively related with earnings for males, providing them with strong earnings. Meanwhile, traditional gender role orientation was slightly negatively associated with earnings for females, providing them weaker earnings. This suggests that men who have traditional male-female attitudes about working are rewarded in the workplace for seeking to maintain the social order, while women were neither rewarded nor punished. In general, the study indicated that even though gender role beliefs are beginning to become less traditional for men and women, traditional gender role orientation continues to intensify the gender wage gap.

The Pipeline Theory

The Pipeline Theory describes the situation in which women are placed on a track that would eventually promote them to a top executive position. However, this process is long, and women sometimes spend 20–35 years in the pipeline waiting to advance to CEO positions.[44] While many argue that women in the pipeline are becoming sufficiently trained and educated to compete for top-level positions, others contend that women in the pipeline are being unjustly held back from advancement. The latter would call this situation the “leaky pipe,” describing a situation in which the pipeline has not advanced women to top-level positions due to “leaks” and “blockages” in the pipe. For example, some believe that there

are not enough women in the pipeline. Secondly, women make many sacrifices and tradeoffs while moving up the pipeline. Lastly, the environment in many companies discourages women from advancing because they are male dominated.[37] In order for the pipeline to work there must be a desire from women to fill the high executive positions in order for them to even be considered for those positions.

The glass ceiling and disclosure of sexual orientation

In order to excel in the workplace it is important that people are familiar with a worker's strong attributes. This may present obstacles for the LGBT community because their sexual orientation may be a large factor that plays in to how they identify themselves. In a study done by Ragins in 2004, disclosure of sexual orientation has been found to have some positive, some negative, and nonsignificant effects on work attitudes, psychological strain, and compensation. Ragins, Singh and Cornwell in 2007, found that in some cases disclosure of sexual orientation has been found to result in reports of verbal harassment, job termination, and even physical assault. (D'Augelli & Grossman, 2001; Friskopp & Silverstein, 1996). In their study, Ragins, Singh and Cornwell examined fear of disclosure only among LGBT employees who had not disclosed, or had not fully disclosed their sexual identity at work. Promotion rate and compensation were used to measure career outcomes. Promotions were defined as involving two or more of the following criteria that may occur within or between organizations: significant increases in salary; significant increases in scope of responsibility; changes in job level or rank; or becoming eligible for bonuses, incentives, and stock plans. Given this definition, respondents were asked how many promotions they had received over the past 10 years. Respondents also reported their current annual compensation, which included salary, bonuses, commissions, stock options, and profit sharing. The findings showed that those who feared more negative consequences to disclosure reported less job satisfaction, organizational commitment, satisfaction with opportunities for promotion, career commitment, and organization-based self-esteem and greater turnover intentions than those who feared less negative consequences.[45]

The Glass Ceiling in Developing Countries

The glass ceiling phenomenon is one not specific to the U.S.; other women also experience barriers similar to the glass ceiling. In many developing countries improving the number of educated women has decreased the number of hours a woman works in a household. In countries such as Mexico, India, and South Africa, women work substantially more hours than men.[46] On average women work one hour and nine minutes more.[clarification needed] With this gap women would be able to provide more money than the men if they were in paid positions.[46] However, because women’s wages are roughly twenty percent lower than that of men, it is more difficult for them to make a substantial contribution even if they did work outside the household.[46] Statistics also show that 90% of people countries surveyed in East Africa, the Pacific, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and other transition economies thought that both husbands and wives should contribute to the household income.[46] The glass ceiling comes into play when these women do want to go out to find work and support their family but are stopped because of lack of experience. The glass ceiling affects women and the workplace in countries all around the world.

Variations and related terms

Brass Ceiling – In the traditionally male-dominated fields of law enforcement and military service, some people use the term “brass ceiling” to describe the difficulty women have when they try to rise up in the ranks. "The brass" denotes the decision-makers at the top of an organization, especially in the military; it is an example of synecdoche.

Stained-Glass Ceiling is a sociological phenomenon in religious communities similar to the concept of the "glass ceiling." The concept revolves around the apparent difficulty for women who seek to gain a role within church leadership.

Bamboo ceiling – The exclusion of Asian-descendants from executive and managerial roles on the basis of subjective factors such as "lack of leadership potential" or "inferior communication ability" whereas the East Asian-descendants candidate has superior objective credentials such as education in high-prestige universities (in comparison to their white counterparts with only lower-prestige university credentials).[47] For example, research shows that there are a decent number of partners at leading prestigious law firms in the United States who did not attend top notch law schools. However, an East Asian American partner of a leading law firm who did not attend a "Top 16 Law School" (according to the US News ranking) would be seldom found.

Concrete Ceiling – This is a term used to describe the type of barrier minority woman encounter. Caucasian women may face the glass ceiling in the workforce, but be able to break through it from time to time; however, minority women’s glass ceiling tends to be more solid and unyielding. This ‘concrete ceiling’ is due to minority women facing both issues of sexism and racism which intensifies their obstructions in advancing within the labor market.[48]

Expatriate Glass Ceiling – After breaking through the first level of the glass ceiling, many women are beginning to face an additional barrier. This is a term used to describe this second level of obstruction which prevents women in managerial positions from receiving foreign management assignments, projects, and experiences that is becoming increasingly more important for promotion into the upper-level managerial positions as documented by Insch, McIntyre, and Napier.[49]

Glass Closet – The exclusion of openly gay men and women from certain jobs, especially in the media.

Glass elevator (or glass escalator) – Some believe there is a rapid promotion of men over women, especially into management, in female-dominated fields such as nursing.[50][51][52] They say men in these fields are promoted with ease – they actually have to struggle not to advance due to facing invisible pressures and expectations to move up from where they currently are. This is based on traditional gender roles and stereotypes that men are expected to be in the chief roles, while women are to be in the subordinate positions. Therefore, in the fields where men are less common, they receive differential treatment that favors them to exert their authority and control in the workplace. Others believe that men in female-dominated professions are discriminated against and treated worse than women, the way women are treated in other professions.[53]

Glass cliff – A situation wherein someone has been promoted into a risky, difficult job where the chances of failure are higher.

Celluloid ceiling, referring to the small number of women in top positions in Hollywood, as documented by Lauzen (2002) and others.

Glass Labyrinth – referring to something related to a maze that one can find the way out of and get through; otherwise thought of as finding a path through power in an organization.

Sticky Floor – refers to women who are trapped in low-wage, low mobility jobs in state and local government.[54]

Sticky Ladder – A term used to describe women's struggle to reach the top of the corporate ladder. This term describes the theory that women are not incapable of reaching the top; they just get "stuck" on the middle rungs of the ladder.

Glass Wall – Refers to the phenomenon of high rates of women advancing to executive positions but only in certain industries.[55]

Silicon Ceiling - A term used to refer to the barriers faced by women entrepreneurs in the technology sector. [56]

The effect has also inspired a musical, bearing the same name. "Glass Ceiling" (2006), written by Bret VandenBos and Alex Krall, examined and parodied the idiosyncrasies of both males and females in the corporate workplace.[57]